ONTARIO, Calif. — A six-sided steel cage illuminated in the middle of a dark amphitheater. A tuxedo-clad ring announcer with a day-glo tan and a golden voice. A fighter walking out with title belts draped over both shoulders and an entourage trailing behind him.
Everything about Kris Arrey's entrance is reminiscent of a UFC event except for one thing: He's only 10 years old.
Arrey is one of four dozen kids as young as 8 competing in a children's mixed martial arts event at a church an hour east of Los Angeles. Boys and girls with nicknames like the Black Widow, the Savage or the Anointed One come as close to participating in full-contact MMA as California law will allow without anyone being led away in handcuffs.
In one of the day's first fights, a young boy exits the cage with a welt already forming under his left eye as a result of an accidental blow to the face the referee didn't spot. In another bout, a preteen girl slams her opponent to the mat and pummels her with blows to the chest as a man standing beside the cage shouts, "Keep smashing her!"
When it's Arrey's turn to enter the cage, he's confident he'll dispatch more pain than he endures.
Arrey began grappling at his father's martial arts gym as a toddler, entered his first jiu jitsu competition at age 4 and now boasts a 24-3 record in MMA bouts. His strategy entering fights is typically to ground his opponent, isolate one of his arms and lock in an arm bar, a submission hold Arrey has used to win so many fights that he has earned the nickname, "The Arm Collector."
"That's always been my favorite move ever since I started," Arrey said. "Most of the time it's just get in, take 'em down, arm bar. I like to get it done as fast as possible."
The threat of Arrey's signature hold forces opponent Cross Betzold to defend against it throughout the fight. Betzold tries to stay on his feet as deep into rounds as possible, striking mostly with long-range kicks and punches and protecting his arms at all costs whenever Arrey manages to take him down.
Only once late in the fight does Arrey's father see an opening for his son to go for an arm bar.
"Keep punching that arm, Kris. Keep punching that arm," Richard Arrey shouts. "This is your chance. Finish this."
And try Arrey does, pounding his fists into Betzold's left arm to weaken his resolve before attempting to lock in his favorite move.
Arrey does this for two reasons. The first is because this is how he has been trained. The second is because a committee of adults from California decided all of this was OK.
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Children's MMA first drew the attention of California legislators in 2013 when many of them received an alarming video via mass email that compelled them to take a closer look. The eight-second clip showed a young boy landing a hard right cross to the chin of 9-year-old California resident Aalijah Pineda during a bout earlier that year.
Though full video of the fight revealed Pineda was unharmed and the referee had immediately disqualified her opponent for striking above the collarbone, members of California's State Athletic Commission remained concerned. They temporarily prohibited all forms of children's MMA within the state and appointed a sub-committee to examine the safety issues the sport presented.
"Our job is to protect the safety of the public, so we felt like we had to take a hard look at this," said Andy Foster, Executive Officer of the State Athletic Commission. "I can't emphasize enough the level of seriousness that went into this decision. I've been around the commission world awhile, and I can't recall any one thing where I saw commissioners work so hard. They really wanted to make sure that our children were safe."
A glimpse inside the colorful, controversial world of youth MMA | The Turnstile - Yahoo Sports
